Catalog Number

Type

Date

Contributor

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Boulder, Colorado

Extent

65 p.

Description

This series of interviews explores the more than four decades of Juan Rodriguez's experiences as a pioneer in the development of computer data storage products and as the consummate serial entrepreneur.

Beginning as a tape drive engineer in IBM's Boulder laboratory, Juan co-founded StorageTek in 1969 which by 1981 reached $1 billion in revenue (36% annual growth). Today StorageTek is a leading global supplier of library systems as a subsidiary of Oracle. At StorageTek he served as VP of Engineering, VP and GM of Hard Disk Operations, and VP and GM of Optical Disk Operations.

In 1985, Juan left StorageTek to co-found Exabyte, where he held the positions of chairman, president and CEO. In 1996, he co-founded Ecrix Corporation and, as its chairman and CEO, led the charge for its development of the breakthrough VXA packet-format tape drive, ultimately merging Ecrix with Exabyte in 2001. Juan has also served as a director of Maxtor, Vixel and Iomega.

For the last two decades, Juan has been a professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado. He is also the co-founder of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, a joint venture between the College of Engineering and the College of Business at the University of Colorado. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1990 and was awarded The CCNY Engineering School Alumni Group's Career Achievement Award in 2002 and the Townsend Harris medal by the Alumni association of The City College of New York in 2003. Juan has a BEE from The City College of New York (1962) and a MSEE from New York University (1963).